Sometimes, people send messages in bottles not to find love, or friendship, or to express regret, or to say goodbye. Some send messages in bottles simply as an expression of love. I was touched by a story submitted to me by Massiel Tunnell, who stumbled upon a message in a bottle just last weekend on the beach in front of her property while walking with her family.
Today: a tiny post about a tiny–but very intriguing–message. A message in a shell.
At the end of July this year, Amy Mayes was walking Cocoa Beach with her husband and kids when they stumbled upon a shell that appeared to have writing on its inner surface, according to WKMG News 6 in Orlando.
I would like to tell you a message in a bottle story that is equally heartwarming and heartbreaking. It all starts with a lighthouse on a lonely island, a devoted lighthouse keeper, and a New Year’s tradition. When I think of it now, it puts me in mind of one of my daughter’s favorite books, Hello, Lighthouse! by Sophie Blackall. Blackall’s book even notes the tradition of lighthouse keepers sending messages in bottles. Hello, Lighthouse! begins (with emphases provided by my daughter): “On the hiiiighest rock, of a tiiiiiny island, at the eeeedge of the world stands a lighthouse…”
A Brief History of the Thacher Island Lighthouse(s)
Our story begins: On the hiiiighest rock, of a tiiiiny island, off the coast of Massachusetts, stands a lighthouse. This lighthouse stands on Thacher Island, a world unto itself.
In the early days of America–when we were still colonies, actually–there were a great number of shipwrecks in the area. In fact, Thacher Island takes its name from a shipwreck survivor: Anthony Thacher. He and his wife Elizabeth were the lone survivors of an awful shipwreck in 1635. Dozens of others, including their five children, were swept away.
Shipwrecks continued around Thacher Island. This led to none other than John Hancock petitioning the provincial government to build lighthouses Thacher Island. The lighthouses fired up in 1771. According to the video below, these were the last lighthouses to be built in America by the British colonial government
In the following years of conflict, it appeared that the lighthouses were helping the British fleet navigate the area more than they were helping captains and colonists avoid wrecks. So, a company of minutemen headed to the island in 1775 where they destroyed the lights and brought the lighthouse keeper and his family back to the mainland. Eventually, the lighthouses were restored to operation and taken over by the new government of the United States. As the video above explains, George Washington directed Alexander Hamilton to appoint keepers for the nation’s lighthouses, and he did–including for Thacher Island.
Lighthouse Keepers Return to Thacher Island
According to the Thacher Island Association, “The present 123-foot granite towers were completed in 1861 raising the lights to 166 feet above sea level.” About a century later, in 1983, The Thacher Island Association took over care for the island. They restored the lighthouses and keepers’ homes, and began operating the lighthouses with the help of volunteers. This is where volunteer Lighthouse Keeper Ann Hernandez comes into the picture!
A Message in a Bottle Tradition
According to The Boston Globe, “Each year on her birthday, Ann Hernandez and her boyfriend, Alan Tomaska, would settle on the rocky shore of Thacher Island and uncork a bottle of champagne in a toast to the day. When the bottle was empty and the tide going out, Hernandez would tuck a handwritten message inside and Tomaska would hurl the bottle over the rocks and into the crashing surf.”
Thacher Island and its duel lighthouses. This is the rocky coast where Ann Hernandez sat with her partner on her birthday in 2003. They drank a bottle of champagne, then sent a message out in it.
I always wonder what makes someone send a message in a bottle. What do they hope for? Ann, for example. Did she want a penpal? Maybe she just wanted to see where it would end up? Maybe I read too much into these things, but I wonder: was there something in Ann that made her long for the outside world? For adventure beyond her own daily sphere? She already spent her summers tending the lighthouse on Thacher Island. Ann must have been an adventurous person.
Lighthouse Keeper’s Message in a Bottle, Found!
Six years after sending one of these bottles, a French couple found it washed ashore in their tiny village.
Ann Hernandez’s Message in a Bottle. Photo: Michel and Daniele Onesime / Boston.com
When they looked for Ann, they found that she had passed away unexpectedly the year before they found her note. During her lifetime, according to Boston.com, only one of her bottles was found. It surfaced “in Marshfield, a place that Hernandez dismissed as not exotic enough to merit excitement.”
But according to her friends, “A quaint fishing village on the western coast of France…was just the sort of place where Hernandez would have loved to see her message in a bottle land.”
The French village where Ann’s bottle was found, St. Gilles Croix de Vie. Photo: Wikipedia user Splashview.
The French folks who found her bottled note felt the inexplicable power of messages in bottles to connect people. In fact, they befriended Ann’s friends and family! They hoped to visit Thacher Island and the lighthouse that was a home away from home for Ann.
In the meantime, the discovery of the note was a powerful reminder of Ann’s life for her friends and family. It’s the same with so many messages in bottles: Her friends and family must have believed they would never hear from Ann again. But then, all of a sudden, they did.
Manon van der Molen is the kind of person who picks up trash off the beach. Plenty of people get upset about plastic trash at sea, mucking up our beaches. But Manon? She actually does something about it. That’s how she stumbled upon a photo in a bottle.
“My kids are amazed by all the plastic in the ocean and do not understand why people do that. See–even kids understand!” Indeed. I think kids often understand these things better than adults. It’s obvious, even to children, that too many of us are not taking care of the ocean. But we could.
So, when Manon was walking the beach with her family–her husband and three kids–on May 5th, 2017, at De Haan, Belgium, she was picking up plastic trash. That’s a great way to help! And sometimes, among the trash, we stumble upon a little “treasure”–a reward for cleaning the beach, in the form of an unexpected human connection. A reminder, perhaps, that while most of what’s floating around in the ocean is simply trash that shouldn’t be there, still…maybe, just maybe, one in a billion or so pieces of flotsam can create an amazing and beautiful connection between strangers.
Ashes in a Bottle Become Popular “Final Journey” For Deceased Loved Ones
Life is such an amazing adventure that most folks don’t want it to end. And when it inevitably does, some send their loved ones on a final journey–but putting cremated ashes in a bottle and sending it to sea. In recent years, a number of beachcombers have stumbled upon human ashes in bottles. In every case, the person whose ashes are in the bottle was deeply loved by their family, and the family chose this gesture as a way of honoring the person’s love of travel or desire to see the world.
Personally, my favorite version of this memorial is the kind that implores the finder to share a drink with the “person” whose ashes are in the bottle.
If you find human remains in a bottle tomorrow, I guarantee a stiff drink is going to make you feel less nervous. Continue reading →
A while back, a reader wrote to me of a lovely message in a bottle he and his wife found while they were on vacation at Excellence Riviera Cancun north of Puerto Morelos, Mexico, in November of 2014. The message in a bottle contained heartfelt wedding vows to “Danielle”. Now, I hope to help find the person who sent that message in a bottle. But I need your help!